Monday, August 15, 2016

Culture in the Provinces: A Very Short Note

I like just about
everything about Sweden, even the weather. I like their intellectuals, too,
mostly for being both meticulous and down-to-earth—at least by the standards of
intellectuals. But when I think about the position of intellectuals in Swedish
culture, I always think about a moment from the late 90s. I was at a party in
the medieval Swedish university town of Lund—a quieter, less touristed version
of England’s Cambridge. The man who’d hired me to give some lectures had kindly
invited me to his house to a gathering of all his friends, including one of his
oldest and dearest. The two had known each other since childhood, growing up in
a small town and dreaming of Brecht’s Berlin theater and Picasso walking with
Gertrude Stein left bank. My host had become an established professor in a fine
old Swedish university, a man who spoke a refined English and (though it was
hard for me to judge) a beautiful version of his native tongue. He wrote
gracefully about culture for the main Swedish newspapers, translated poetry,
and had authored a study of Renaissance sonnet sequences. His old friend,
though, was the real success—and like so many truly ambitious citizens of small
countries, had left to make his mark on a bigger stage. He held a chair at the
Sorbonne, was the world expert on certain elements of classical civilization,
was a member of the Swedish Academy, voting on the Nobel prizes. At the party
he took me aside, punched me lightly on the arm, and said “You want to know
about Swedish culture? Look at him…” he made a graceful, Gallic gesture at the
host, laughing gently at someone’s witticism across the room. “In Sweden, there
are 2,000 like him. The rest have snowmobiles.”